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And don't forget that twelve years had gone by between the time Blatch was reading the 

clippings about the trial and the time he told the tale to Tommy Williams. He also told 

Tommy he got better than a thousand dollars from a footlocker Quentin had in his closet, 

but the police said at Andy's trial that there had been no sign of burglary. I have a few 

ideas about that. First, if you take the cash and the man it belonged to is dead, how are 

you going to know anything was stolen, unless someone else can tell you it was there to 

start with? Second, who's to say Blatch wasn't lying about that part of it? Maybe he didn't 

want to admit killing two people for nothing. Third, maybe there were signs of burglary 

and the cops either overlooked them - cops can be pretty dumb - or deliberately covered 

them up so they wouldn't screw the DA's case. The guy was running for public office, 

remember, and he needed a conviction to run on. An unsolved burglary-murder would 

have done him no good at all. 

But of the three, I like the middle one best. I've known a few Elwood Blatches hi my time 

at Shawshank - the trigger-pullers with the crazy eyes. Such fellows want you to think 

they got away with die equivalent of the Hope Diamond on every caper, even if they got 

caught with a two-dollar Timex and nine bucks on the one they're doing time for. 

And there was one thing in Tommy's story that convinced Andy beyond a shadow of a 

doubt. Blatch hadn't hit Quentin at random. He had called Quentin 'a big rich prick', and 

he had known Quentin was a golf pro. Well, Andy and his wife had been going out to that 

country club for drinks and dinner once or twice a week for a couple of years, and Andy 

had done a considerable amount of drinking there once he found out about his wife's 

affair. There was a marina with the country club, and for a while in 1947 there had been a 

part-time grease-and-gas jockey working there who matched Tommy's description of 

Elwood Blatch. A big tall man, mostly bald, with deep-set green eyes. A man who had an 

unpleasant way of looking at you, as though he was sizing you up. He wasn't there long, 

Andy said. Either he quit or Briggs, the fellow in charge of the marina, fired him. But he 

wasn't a man you forgot He was too striking for that. 

So Andy went to see Warden Norton on a rainy, windy day with big grey clouds 

scudding across the sky above the grey walls, a day when the last of the snow was 

starting to melt away and show lifeless patches of last year's grass in the fields beyond 

the prison. The warden has a good-sized office in the administration wing, and behind the 

warden's desk there's a door which connects with the assistant warden's office. The 

assistant warden was out that day, but a trustee was there. He was a half-lame fellow 

whose real name I have forgotten; all the inmates, me included, called him Chester, after 

Marshall Dillon's sidekick. Chester was supposed to be watering the plants and dusting 

and waxing the floor. My guess is that the plants went thirsty that day and the only 

waxing that was done happened because of Chester's dirty ear polishing the keyhole plate 

of that connecting door. 

He heard the warden's main door open and close and then Norton saying, 'Good morning, 

Dufresne, how can I help you?' 

'Warden,' Andy began, and old Chester told us that he could hardly recognize Andy's 

voice it was so changed. 'Warden ... there's something ... something's happened to me 

that's ... that's so ... so ... I hardly know where to begin.'